This article proposes to clarify the notion of “screen” elaborated by Anne-Marie Christin that is considered difficult to define. By conducting a survey on the uses of the term in her work (statistical and chronological survey and analysis of co-occurrences) and by reconstructing the scientific context of the time and the debates that animate specialists of writing, we have retraced the “life” of this notion of “screen” from its first use to its last. Starting from the polysemic notion of the screen, Anne-Marie Christin progressively elaborates the concept of “screen thinking” which gives her theory of writing ultimate coherence. The major thesis of the iconicity and spatiality of writing, which is the basis of her work, is then articulated with the thesis that writing participates in a specific “visual thought”, distinct from the linguistic sphere.